Picture of the Week is my many total imaging hours M31 – the Andromeda galaxy. Lost count on the total number of Sky90/M26C OSC CCD hours that have gone into this one. Probably 15 or more and certainly well within the diminishing returns region for my location. Another object I need to keep well away from so that I can grab more new stuff, and not waste valuable imaging time trying to improve something that cannot be improved, without a substantial increase in total imaging hours.
This object has a special place in my heart as it was the first image I took with the new (then) M25C OSC CCD on a single Sky 90, piggy-backed on the Celestron Nexstar 11 GPS SCT. It was also the first “all-nighter” I pulled, running right through into sunrise. Finally the colour was all wrong because of something to do with the camera firmware, but that didn’t stop Noel Carboni reaching into his Photoshop magic trick box and getting the true colour into the image.
